According to Government News, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is developing new applications more quickly than was ever thought possible using a “platform plus agile” approach.

DHHS CIO, Dr. Steve Hodgkinson, says this approach is about starting with the production platform, then building a minimum viable product on top of it, which is followed by iterative improvements. He notes that governments should start thinking of themselves as consumers of IT services.

From the article:

“If you are smart about how you use those [platform] products you can get a minimum viable product (MVP) running pretty quickly at a low cost and with low risk. Then get the MVP in front of users, get feedback and start the iterative co-design. It’s much less costly and it’s much less risky.

[Hodgkinson] says it means real digital transformation. “People see progress and they quickly realise which originally specified requirements were unrealistic. It ensures a more commonsense approach compared to older waterfall methodologies.”